Category: General News

(Reuters) – The Supreme Court agreed on Friday to decide whether the government can require a former federal sex offender to register a change of address even after he had served his sentence and been unconditionally freed from custody. In a brief order, the court agreed to hear the government’s appeal of a July 2012 decision overturning the conviction of Air Force veteran ____ ____ for violating the federal Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act of 2006. Full Article Update April 18 Timeline Summary and Review – of Oral Argument April…

When he was 22 years old in 2003, ____ ____ met a girl online. She was two months away from her 15th birthday, and he knew it. Both were living in Colorado Springs, and after two months of chatting online, they met and had sex. The girl told ____ that she had been sexually involved with men his age before, so he thought it was no big deal, he said. “I kind of got myself into feeling I was her friend,” ____ said. “If I said no, she was going…

ATLANTA — They’ve become popular viewing on the Internet, but pretty soon those online arrest mug shot websites could get some handcuffs of their own from Georgia’s state legislature. Monday evening, the State Senate overwhelmingly passed HB150 by a vote of 53 to 0. Sponsored by Rep. Roger Bruce (D-Atlanta), the bill would force those mug shot websites to take down photos of those who’ve been cleared without charging them for it. Full Article

An appeals court decision casts doubt on numerous North Georgia sexual predator convictions and raises further questions about the operations of an undercover FBI task force already under scrutiny for possible impropriety. On March 14, the Georgia Court of Appeals reversed a computer pornography conviction against ___ ____, who was charged in 2010 based on evidence obtained by the Northwest Georgia Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force. The court found that police were planting the idea of a crime in ____’s head and that the court didn’t have sufficient evidence…

Colorado’s tough sex offender laws are supposed to keep predators under tight supervision. But a series of lawsuits claim that the system is violating even minor offenders’ rights to free speech and association, prohibiting contact with family members — and, in one particularly bizarre case, telling a 62-year-old man that a discussion with a stepdaughter about her pregnancy constitutes unlawful “third party contact with a child.” Boulder civil rights attorney Alison Ruttenberg has filed at least three federal lawsuits in recent months challenging actions taken by probation officers and others responsible…

TIPPECANOE COUNTY, Ind. (WLFI) – As a matter of policy, WLFI does not cover suicides. Numerous studies point to a potential “copycat effect” following media coverage of suicides. But when the mother of a 14-year-old girl who took her own life due to bullying reached out to us, we had to tell her story.   Danielle Green’s daughter hanged herself from a tree outside the family’s mobile home park on March 5. … Danielle says the bullying started on Feb. 28 of 2012. She says Angel’s father was put in jail for…

Miracle Village is so remote, the residents compare themselves to lepers. Two miles of sugar cane separate 100 men from nearby Pahokee, itself a flyspeck on the shores of Lake Okeechobee. They fill the skeleton shacks of an abandoned sugar-company town. This is among the only places to live comfortably as a sex offender in South Florida. For many of these men, pushed to the fringe by residency restrictions, Miracle Village was the last net before homelessness. “In the beginning, no one wanted us around,” said Pat Powers, director of Matthew 25 Ministries,…

On an overcast spring day in 1996, a handful of people filed out of the Oval Office and assembled on the driveway of the White House before a scrum of reporters. They cast satisfied glances at the television cameras as birds chirped and a helicopter whirred nearby. Nothing except for the white memorial ribbons pinned to their lapels indicated the nature of their fateful connection to each other as the parents of children kidnapped by strangers and, in all but one case, viciously assaulted and murdered. Full Article

De Pere becomes the first community in Northeast Wisconsin to repeal its sex offender residency ordinance. In a 5-to-3 vote last night, the city council moved to no longer limit where convicted sex offenders can live. For the last three years, registered sex offenders in De Pere, unless approved by a city residency board, could not live within 500 feet of where children gather, like schools, parks and churches. Now, that city ordinance is no more. “Well I’m very happy, I think ultimately repealing our sex offender residency ordinance makes our community…

PASCO COUNTY, Fla. – Two juveniles have been arrested in connection with a videotaped sex act in the library at Fivay High School in Pasco County, according to a sheriff’s statement.  Deputies say a 17-year-old boy had sex with a 15-year-old girl, reportedly on tables behind some book shelves.  Thy say the act was videotaped by a 15-year-old boy and shared via Bluetooth transmission with a female student.  The 17-year-old boy is now charged with lewd or lascivious battery. The student who videotaped the act is charged with transmission of…

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) – A Florida appeals court has decided that posting threats on one’s personal Facebook page can be prosecuted under the state’s “sending written threats to kill or do bodily harm” law.  The 1st District Court of Appeal on Monday ruled in a case that a Facebook post could be considered a “sending” for the purposes of the law. Article